


Night - Home is a Fire

by Mercury Starlight (WoolandWater)



Series: The Young Ones - Love & Mobsters [16]
Category: The Young Ones (TV 1982)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Anxiety Attacks, Attachment Issues, Child Abandonment, Child Abuse, M/M, Mommy Issues, Panic Attacks, Songfic, emotional suppression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-07
Updated: 2014-08-07
Packaged: 2018-02-12 01:19:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2090337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WoolandWater/pseuds/Mercury%20Starlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Timeline: October 1986, quite possibly the very next night after the end of History.</p><p>Anatomy of a panic attack.</p><p><em>Whatever it is that's been happening to him in the middle of the night - I want it to stop so badly [...] I wish he'd tell me what's going on.</em> -Rick Pratt</p><p>There's a chance this could be read as a stand-alone fic, but the characters have evolved to the point that it's likely to startle someone reading the ending out of context. So just keep that in mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night - Home is a Fire

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been author-edited for typos and grammar, but has NOT been beta'd!
> 
> Although it's most certainly not a requirement, I highly suggest readers read this story in the same way I wrote it - with the song it's based around playing on loop. The song is "Home is a Fire" by Death Cab for Cutie. You can find it, among other places, [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G-tgrHb4ug). At the very least, I recommend listening to it at least once. It's both awesome, and sort-of sets the mood.

_Sleep, sleep with the lights on_  
 _Shuttered with shades drawn_  
 _There's too many windows_

Vyvyan is awake in bed, staring at the ceiling. His anxiety, his panic, won't let him sleep. He's trying to ignore it, watch with clinical detachment as it washes over him in waves and passes like it has so many times before.

'A chemical reaction,' he thinks, 'Adrenaline, cortisol, epinephrine. A simple malfunction of the fight-or-flight response.'

He's trying not to acknowledge the fear, and the reasons behind it. He knows indulging the fear only urges the panic on. He's failing. He's practiced in fighting it off – he's had trouble with this most of his life, though intermittently. It had all but disappeared by the time he started University and he thought he was through with it entirely – until about a year ago. Suddenly the attacks were back, more frequent and stronger on-average, harder to manage. He's grateful for Rick's tiny night light – it keeps him from brooding in total darkness. Too much of that and he might as well dye his hair black and get into The Cure.

He hates this feeling, this creeping, rolling fear. He thinks about this house, his friends, his housemates, Rick (especially Rick, always Rick), and he feels vulnerable and tiny and exposed. He feels like he's on a precipice, looking down into oblivion, with only the tiniest of threads holding him back. His stomach hurts, his mouth is dry, he can't stop clenching his jaw. Rick sleeps next to him, oblivious, his breath whispering softly from his nose. The sound, usually soothing and comforting, makes him want to crawl out of his skin. It sounds too much like love, and when the fear is loose, love feels dangerous.

_Noise - cars on the freeway_  
 _Tempting a clean break_  
 _But there's nowhere left to go_

He's thought about leaving, about cutting all ties from everyone and calming this terrible, intermittent panic forever. His wanderlust has gripped him and begged him not to stay in one place for much longer. His self-protection instinct has scolded him for letting himself get so attached to so many people; for getting attached to anyone at all.

He's been close to going through with it.

Once, quite a while ago now, in the midst of one of his worst attacks, he packed everything he wasn't willing to part with in the middle of the night. He took his case down to the front hallway and left the thirty quid he owed Neil on the kitchen table. Then he went back upstairs, into Rick's room. He sat gingerly on the edge of the bed and watched him sleep, the gentle light from the window casting shapes on his face.

_Watching the roots weave_  
 _Through cracks in the concrete_

He couldn't go. He took back his money and took his things back up to his room. Then he went back into Rick's room and held him tight until morning, ignoring his protests over being woken up. Vyvyan didn't sleep that night, and he didn't care. He couldn't leave him, he refused. He wouldn't do to Rick what his mother had done to him, all those years ago. He wouldn't let her poison him, both of them, like that. And he didn't want to be alone.

He still doesn't. He doesn't think he ever will. But that thought just fuels his fear, and the panic flares; this is going to be a bad one.

_Plates they will shift_  
 _Houses will shake_  
 _Fences will drift_  
 _We will awake_  
 _Only to find_  
 _Nothing's the same_  
 _Nothing's the same_

A lot of people talk about their inability to remember the traumatic events of their early lives. He envies those people. He remembers with near-perfect clarity the fortnight his eight-year-old self spent alone and terrified in his own house, waiting with ever-increasing panic for his mother to return. It is burned into his memory forever.

He remembers not even feeling worried the first three days, as she had occasionally disappeared overnight before. He'd grown up fast, long before – he'd had to. He simply began his practiced rationing of the meager offerings in the fridge and waited. On day four, he ran out of lunchmeat and got nervous. On day five, he finished off the bread and realized the only things left were mustard, soda crackers and half a case of his mother's Babycham. He stopped going to school. On day seven, the power went out – apparently, she'd stopped paying the utilities a while before she left – he later doubted she'd ever paid them. She was most likely a rent-dodger, it would explain why they'd moved around so much. The water went on day eight. On day nine, he caught a rat, roasted it like a marshmallow over a fire he'd built in the garden and found it wasn't half bad. He spent most of day eleven curled up in a ball on the darkened living room floor, crying for his mother and berating himself for being such a baby.

No one seemed to notice anything was amiss until somewhere around day thirteen, when he was caught stealing food (and more Babycham) off a grocery truck. Of course, from there it was off to foster care for him, and when none of several dozen people could handle him, it was off to the borstal. From the moment that driver caught him trying to feed himself he'd ceased to have a home, only a bed and a roof and food in his stomach and stupid rules to follow, all belonging to somebody else. He'd had nowhere that was his and no one he could trust, but for a few, trifling exceptions.

Until now. Now, he has everything to lose. And the weight of it smothers him and makes it hard to breathe.

_Home, home is a fire_  
 _A burning reminder_  
 _Of where we belong, love_

If Vyvyan's life has taught him anything, it's that things like love and security are rare and fleeting.

He has some fond memories of his mother. He can remember her laughter, her smile. He remembers carefully-taught lessons at the market, in pickpocketing and shoplifting especially, that he still uses today. He remembers being allowed at parties he was far too young to attend – he was too young to remember his first sip of alcohol and he'd smoked his first joint before he started attending school. When she was in the mood, she could be very affectionate – he remembers hugs and kisses, and being allowed on her lap while they watched telly.

But he also remembers the forceful shove and snide comments that came if he reached for her when she was bored with affection. He can remember long nights and days alone, hours spent on the street because she'd unthinkingly locked him out of the house and vanished. He can see her disapproving, disgust-laced sneer, hear her annoyed insults. Among the oldest of the various scars he's accumulated over the years are several cigarette burns - each was purposeful. He was never secure under her care. It often seemed she enjoyed messing with his head, tricking him into trusting her more so she could pull the rug away and laugh. He remembers always feeling torn between wanting her closer and wanting her gone, and for years after she disappeared he blamed himself, afraid he'd wished her away.

Through his career in foster care, he'd had two very positive experiences, with people who not only seemed to truly care and want the best for him, but to understand and accept him, as he was. They let him be himself, without sanction or punishment. He liked them, they felt right. He wanted to stay with them, to let them love him and earn his trust. He loved living with them, being a part of something, of a family. But life taught him quickly that kindled hope is easily doused.

He was too young to remember the first good family's name anymore, and their faces are fading. He was removed from their home with no warning and no explanation, not really even anybody's fault, just the over-burdened, bureaucratic system trying to shuffle things as best it could. He couldn't have been with them for more than a few months, half a year at best. He was placed into a house so horrible he ran away within a week and had to be re-homed, instigating a pattern that lasted for years, bouncing between the negligent, the well-meaning but incompetent, and the outright abusive. He inadvertently removed himself from the second good family's care when he started running with various gangs, put a couple boys in hospital and found his way into the borstal.

Outside of those isolated experiences, the majority of his life was spent primarily by and for himself. Acquaintances were well and good, and he enjoyed a certain surface fondness for various people, but he became practiced in feeling alone in crowded rooms. He learned to live without home and be content, even happy with that. He threw on a mask of good humor and let it carry him through. He allowed himself a healthy dose of anger. He tried his best to bury the rest of the negatives as far down as they would go, so he would never, ever have to think about them. In trying, it turned out he'd buried the rest of the positives as well, but that was fine; they could never, ever betray him again.

_With walls built up around us_  
 _The bricks make me nervous_  
 _They're only so strong, love_  
 _Yes they're only so strong, love_

And by and large, he's succeeded. Or rather, he had, until Rick - until he'd opened his heart a crack and let him inside. Before Rick, his feelings were safely locked away where they could do no damage. Now some of the positives seep out in bits and spurts, and he finds himself clinging to them, allowing them freedom, even as they allow the negatives to escape alongside them. He's discovered the balance is considerably harder to manage than he'd thought it might be. And at times like tonight, when the negatives are triggered out of him in a torrent, he finds they're close to impossible to handle.

His hands shake, and he laces his fingers over his chest, trying to solve the shaking and the ragged breathing all at once. It solves nothing.

He's fine, he tries to think, things are fine. He has his work, and a room of his own, and his mates, and the poof. He has a home.

'And it could all end tomorrow,' he tries not to think, but does, 'All of it.'

Every attachment comes with an unending list of ways to fail, and each is playing itself out in his head. Every connection has the ability to tear down the ones beside it and he's watching them hypothetically fall. Every person he loves has the potential to leave him, and if the past is any indication, it's only a matter of time before they do.

He knows he shouldn't let the thoughts through. He knows, intellectually, that it might not be true. That there is a slim, but fair chance it will be okay. The panic doesn't care. It forces the thoughts free, feeding itself as it rages through him, crackling in every synapse until he can no longer distinguish it from the matter that makes up his body. His heart thumps hard against the heel of his hand. His lips are numb. The edges of the world are white. He knows he's hyperventilating and tries to compensate. He struggles to breathe slower, deeper.

_Plates they will shift_  
 _Houses will shake_  
 _Fences will drift_  
 _We will awake_  
 _Only to find_  
 _Nothing's the same_  
 _Nothing's the same_

Rick stirs and wakes. He turns over and looks up at Vyvyan with tired eyes.

"You're still awake," he says softly, with a hint of pity.

"Mmm," says Vyvyan, distracted and distant.

"You all right?"

"Fine."

"You're a terrible liar," Rick says kindly. He misses the days when Rick couldn't read him so well. In some ways, those days were easier. But he's glad, because though Rick has never learned the reasons for the attacks, he's seen them before, and he's learned what to do.

Rick sits up and gathers Vyvyan in his arms, and Vyvyan has to fight himself to let him, mentally shout down his internal screams of resistance. He knows if he doesn't let him, he won't sleep, he'll just lie awake in panic for a few more hours until it subsides and it's too light to bother. He knows if he does, he'll only dig himself deeper, peel back his flesh a little more and expose himself to more potential pain. He curses the fear for forcing the choice into consciousness, for forcing him to acknowledge its presence.

He chooses sleep over safety. He chooses Rick over loneliness. He pulls him closer.

Rick wraps one hand around the nape of Vyvyan's neck and uses the other to trace lines down his back in slow, even strokes. Silent, involuntary tears fall from Vyvyan's eyes onto Rick's chest, and Rick ignores them, along with his sniffles. Vyvyan focuses on the firmness of the hand on his neck, the gentleness of the hand at his back. He pushes past the fear stirred up by the gestures and finds strength behind it. He clings to it, while the panic surges in stuttering bursts for what feels like eternity before finally, slowly, ebbing away into the hollow emptiness of calm. Every cell in his body is exhausted. He takes the first truly deep breath he's taken since the attack began and lets it out slowly. He silently thanks the mother of the first good family for teaching him a tool he can finally use again, after all these years. A way to break himself out of the endless, terrible cycle; fear into panic, panic into fear, and on and on until morning. Rick holds him tighter, then slides down a bit until they're eye to eye.

Rick wipes an errant tear from Vyvyan's cheek. Vyvyan frowns at him and Rick shrugs, tracing his fingers down the side of Vyvyan's face.

"Couldn't help it," he whispers apologetically.

Vyvyan kisses him, hard. He's so in love, he could explode. He's so in love, it's giving him panic attacks. He wants to confess it, he _needs_ to, he doesn't even know how much longer he can stop himself, but the mere thought sends him hurtling toward fear again and he swallows it before it can overtake him. He's only ever said it to one person after all. The one who laughed or sneered at him whenever he'd dared to say it. The one who left him to die, in a cold, dark, empty house, for no reason at all.

He pulls away. He can't say it yet, not tonight.

'Not ever,' says the fear, flickering behind his calm.

'Fuck off,' he thinks, 'Back where you came from.'

Rick sees the conflict on Vyvyan's face and furrows his brow.

"You're all right?"

"Will be," Vyvyan croaks and forces a thin, tired smile. It breaks into a flicker of fear and worry before he can stop it and Rick pulls his head back to his chest.

"I've got you," Rick whispers, clinging tightly.

'We've got each other,' Vyvyan thinks as he drifts off, 'What sort of bastard would I be if I told you that's the problem?'

Vyvyan sleeps, in his own home, where he's learning to live with knowing he's loved.

_Nothing's the same_  
 _As Yesterday_  
 _As Yesterday_

**Author's Note:**

> And there you have it - my favorite story in the series. This was the second thing I wrote to completion, even before I'd completed _Prologue_. I spent the ensuing three years trying to get us from Funny to this point and the story just after it. I stumbled across the song, I think probably on last.fm, back in 2011 when it was released. The moment I heard it, I knew exactly what it was about. Or rather, exactly what I could _make it_ about. I still find it difficult to listen to it only one time - listening to it on loop all that time only made me love it _more_. I hope you'll love it - the song _and_ the fic - as much as I do.  <3
> 
> Of course, those who have had panic attacks know that they can vary quite wildly, and that they're often not soothed by _anything_ \- one simply has to ride them out. But they also know allowing oneself to be overcome with anxiety can often make them last longer, be generally worse, and frequently trigger multiple attacks in succession, making the entire experience last anywhere from minutes to _hours_. Y'all are my people. I know that feel. *anxiety solidarity fistbump*


End file.
